Epsilon Muscae
Variable star in the constellation Musca
Epsilon Muscae, Latinized from ε Muscae, is a red giant star of spectral type M5III in the constellation Musca. It is a 4th magnitude star, visible to the naked eye under good observing conditions. It is about 330 light-years from the Earth.
Originally a main-sequence star of around 2 solar masses, Epsilon Muscae is now on the asymptotic giant branch and has expanded to 117 times the Sun's diameter and 1,700 its luminosity. It is a semiregular variable, varying between visual magnitudes 4.0 and 4.3 in eight distinct periods ranging from a month to over half a year in length. Its distance from the Earth is about the same as the Lower Centaurus-Crux subgroup of the Scorpius-Centaurus association, although it is moving much faster at around 100 km/s and does not share a common origin.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Epsilon Muscae”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Musca constellation map.svg by Musca_constellation_map.png: Torsten Bronger derivative work: Kxx (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0
- EpsilonMusLightCurve.png by PopePompus, CC BY-SA 4.0
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